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Think the problem is that Skyrim is way easier/forgiving, and the controls in FPS is much more precise for combat and general gameplay.
You don't have to get frustrated with how your character controls just to loot things even, you simply aim your cursor, grab, take all.
In this game, triggering such sweetspots is an exercise in annoyance.
I'm having a blast more in the story and setting department, thinking over choices and actions to take.
But the UI annoyances will need a fix in the future. It's just not polished enough.
Listen bro, Skyrim is a fun game. But as far as world design, quest design, visual design, just from a design perspective, Witcher is superior. And this is not an opnion, its a fact.
You compare raw Twicher 3 to platinum expanded, patched and modded Skyrim... Still it will be only truly good game with enchanced edition, all DLCs and Requiem + Morrowind loot mods added; Twicher 2 has superior journal and skill progression to this MMO clone so the third part is mixed bag.
I heard for Twicther 4 you just have a hot bath and throw in a Twitcher Toaster mark 4 (no need for a PC, Xbone or ps4).
Its rumoured it will have realistic electrical effects and a probably only good for one play through.
A few more hours in. Updating personal opinion (for clarity, and for those of you who find redding teh hard, the list that follow is my personal "which game does what best"):
TW3
- story, story story: even shitty filler subquests often have some decent writing behind them: honourable mention, the Allgod. 'tis a little POI-quest, lasts about 85 seconds, is quite funny. Most of these filler quests feature some "feels" or "grimdark", coherent with the general vibe, and most of them will face Geralt with choices, whose consequences might be more or less immediate or relevant. Skyrim has none of that.
- main story: TW3 wins hand down, from plot to dialogue to NPC to everything writing-related (conversation branches suck in both games, but TW3's are better written).
- voice acting: slightly better, not by much, but better.
- riding and fast travel done right (well, maybe not "right", but definitively "better").
- the world: much more care has been put in the creation of the world map. It has a "hand-drawn" ("hand-modeled") feeling to it, whereas Skyrim's is fairly meh in that respect.
- Cities/Settlements: their size and realization make sense, in TW3 (Whiterun, the capital of Skyrim, has maybe 30 houses and 4-5 farms). There is also much greater coherence in the ratio/relationship between the city and its surrounding.
- "RPG" system: vaguely better than Skyrim's "master of all trades". This one at least makes the player choose a "speciality" and stick with it.
- music: really great (Skyrim's very good too, but TW3's quite outstanding).
- graphics, obviously. 4 years have passed, so this isn't really much of an achievement. Yet, they are beautiful even on "low", and run ok on older machines such as mine.
- bubs.
Skyrim
- "sandbox" feeling, the world can be interacted with to a much greater degree.
- controls are much better, targeting stuff is much easier, the Dragonborn doesn't seem to suffer from "soapy feet" or clumsy legs as much as Geralt is.
- snow, snow everywhere (personal preference here).
- combat (eek? really?): as much as Skyrim's combat is bland, popamole and boring, at least it gives the player more options than "click furiously slash with automatically-unsheated sword".
- crafting: crafting and repairing in TW3 only seem to be a "player economy control" device (or a money-sink). Crafting makes slightly more sense in Skyrim, at least from the sandbox/sim perspective.
There's more to Skyrim than just doing quests, you know.
I'm not saying that Skyrim is better than The Witcher 3, in fact The Witcher 3 is definitely in my top 3 best RPGs ever while Skyrim is not. But Skyrim definitely is superior to TW3 in the open world sand box aspect and replay value.
Sorry, but that doesn't count at item wear and repairing. It's more of an "enchanting"/"ammunition" feature, from a gameplay standpoint. And the abundance of soul gems, and the fact that they're really easy to fill with souls, makes it really redundant/pointless.
Nail to the coffin, it it entirely possible to go through the whole game without resorting to enchanted/charged items a single time, and without much extra effort. It's really a useless feature that neither adds complexity nor actual flavour to gameplay. It's a superfluous quirk.
Well, ok. But player housing is pretty much fucking useless, even in a "sandbox" context, unless you like really love to RP in a single player game (and here's when those sexy skyrim mods come useful, I guess?) with poor AI and pitiful NPCs.
Isn't that what RPGs are all about? RPing?[/quote]
Not falling for this bait. There's at least one new "What defines an RPG?" thread per month already.
I found it actually quite annoying that you can be the leader of all guilds, and only after a handful of quests, in some cases. Existing leaders conveniently die or betray or just relinquish their position so that the dragonborn can be the master of them all.
Guilds in Skyrim helped ground the player in a specific role and to give them a goal beyond 'kill shit and loot.' I do agree that allowing players to be the leader of all guilds was stupid.
Too bad you can solve all guild-quests by any means necessary. No guild quest requires to actually use the skills that guild is about. It's just kill kill kill until you're guildmaster, which kinda makes one wonder what the purpose was to begin with. EG solving the entire College of Magic guildline by bashing everything in the head with a 2-hander.
Also, what about the half-assed Bards College? It never seemed to have much of a connection to the rest of the game/world... Or that it takes little to nothing to discover the Thieve's guild location, let alone access it (Gothic 2, anyone?). Or that the Dark Brotherhood turns out to be really nice people, rather than a bunch of psycho assassins from outer space.
I think the guilds were really implemented very poorly.
I've embraced years ago, and never even tried to hide it. Despite my passion for CS and CoD4 (both are enough to sate my lust for bloodlust/headshots), I really remain a storyfag at heart, when it comes to RPGs and other games (action/adventure/etc).
Too bad you can solve all guild-quests by any means necessary. No guild quest requires to actually use the skills that guild is about. It's just kill kill kill until you're guildmaster, which kinda makes one wonder what the purpose was to begin with. EG solving the entire College of Magic guildline by bashing everything in the head with a 2-hander.
Also, what about the half-assed Bards College? It never seemed to have much of a connection to the rest of the game/world... Or that it takes little to nothing to discover the Thieve's guild location, let alone access it (Gothic 2, anyone?). Or that the Dark Brotherhood turns out to be really nice people, rather than a bunch of psycho assassins from outer space.
I think the guilds were really implemented very poorly.
Sorry, but that doesn't count at item wear and repairing. It's more of an "enchanting"/"ammunition" feature, from a gameplay standpoint. And the abundance of soul gems, and the fact that they're really easy to fill with souls, makes it really redundant/pointless.
Nail to the coffin, it it entirely possible to go through the whole game without resorting to enchanted/charged items a single time, and without much extra effort. It's really a useless feature that neither adds complexity nor actual flavour to gameplay. It's a superfluous quirk.
My opinion on item wear & repair is pretty simple - just don't. Of course I'd favor Skyrim's recharge system over Witcher's craptastic timesink in this case. Repair systems serve minimal/no purpose in single-player RPGs unless you're trying to do survival simulation, and Witcher 3 is not that.
Too bad you can solve all guild-quests by any means necessary. No guild quest requires to actually use the skills that guild is about. It's just kill kill kill until you're guildmaster, which kinda makes one wonder what the purpose was to begin with. EG solving the entire College of Magic guildline by bashing everything in the head with a 2-hander.
Also, what about the half-assed Bards College? It never seemed to have much of a connection to the rest of the game/world... Or that it takes little to nothing to discover the Thieve's guild location, let alone access it (Gothic 2, anyone?). Or that the Dark Brotherhood turns out to be really nice people, rather than a bunch of psycho assassins from outer space.
I think the guilds were really implemented very poorly.
Why do you want developers to pigeonhole you that way? It's not though the guild quests aren't guild-themed; it's just that you have other ways of solving them. Why is that bad? Do you want to be forced to fight with spells only in every mage guild quest? That's not the sort of character system TES has.
And how does Witcher 3 improve on any of this? Witcher 3 doesn't even have guilds. You solve every witcher contract/quest in exactly the same way: Witcher Sense -> follow the dots -> Twitcher style combat -> Axii sign when given the option in dialogue -> collect $. When it comes down to it, you actually have very few character development choices in Witcher because all the Signs, Potions, Bombs, etc. are secondary to Twitcher style combat. There's no getting away from Attack-Dodge-Attack spam in Witcher 3, while in Skyrim, at the minimum you had the choice to play in other ways, even without the mods.
You have lots of choices in witcher 3 combat. You can choose between a variety of bombs, you can heavily emphasize on signs and unlock alternative modes for them, you can specc alchemy, you can unlock more attackmodes with your sword etc etc.
And sign damage is not secondary. You can boost igni heavily and it will deal 2k damage if you do.
Sure you dont have as much variety as in skyrim but i rather have a limited set of options which are fun instead of having a fuckton of useless spells and dull combat clicking like in Skyrim.
Why do you want developers to pigeonhole you that way? It's not though the guild quests aren't guild-themed; it's just that you have other ways of solving them. Why is that bad? Do you want to be forced to fight with spells only in every mage guild quest? That's not the sort of character system TES has.
Because it would make more sense? The player should only be able to choose "one" guild, and then become master of that guild through an extensive series of compelling, and challenging, quests.
I'm sorry but, it makes no sense that one can become the master of the College of Magic with their spells and mana completely untrained, or that can become a Nightingale without a single point in sneaking or lockpicking. Yes, I do advocate some sort of "checks" for this kind of progression, otherwise the guilds just mean shit, and lose their "flavour" (which is exactly what happens in Skyrim: after becoming master of all the guilds in one playthrough, there is absolutely nothing to compel the player to engage with those again on a different one, except maybe if someone plays as a mage, in which case the gear from the College is actually quite nice).
It's not the TES style? Well, from my humble, non-game-dev standpoint (about which nobody but me really gives a fuck), they're doing it wrong.
The guild system in skyrim is just beyond retarded. You can be the leader of ALL guilds despite the fact that youre just some prick who walked into the castle who does not have the time or even have the skills to represent the guild. Also literally the second quest of the mage guild is involving you grabbing some ubermagical artifacts and solve a mystery that the guild has been working on for the last years or something, right after the quest to sweep the fucking floor.
Morrowind had the guilds and their quests done right; One magic school in 90 and and two in 70 excluded most casual magic users from attaining rank of Archmage and quests were many varied and sensible in contests; from gathering of herbs and thus learning basics of alchemy to Political stuf at the peak with even some inter guild conflicts like Great Houses paths and Fighter/Thiefs guilds which could be resolved in alternative way if you did bothered to read dialogues and ask your mentor Caius Cosades for advice. Not to mention that they all worked well as cover for your Blade work.
Morrowind had the guilds and their quests done right; One magic school in 90 and and two in 70 excluded most casual magic users from attaining rank of Archmage and quests were many varied and sensible in contests; from gathering of herbs and thus learning basics of alchemy to Political stuf at the peak with even some inter guild conflicts like Great Houses paths and Fighter/Thiefs guilds which could be resolved in alternative way if you did bothered to read dialogues and ask your mentor Caius Cosades for advice. Not to mention that they all worked well as cover for your Blade work.
You have lots of choices in witcher 3 combat. You can choose between a variety of bombs, you can heavily emphasize on signs and unlock alternative modes for them, you can specc alchemy, you can unlock more attackmodes with your sword etc etc.
And sign damage is not secondary. You can boost igni heavily and it will deal 2k damage if you do.
While my sword does over 1k damage each hit and is the only viable play style up to the highest levels of Igni boosting? How is that an alternative? The only practically viable combat path in Witcher 3 is sword combat. Period.
Sure you dont have as much variety as in skyrim but i rather have a limited set of options which are fun instead of having a fuckton of useless spells and dull combat clicking like in Skyrim.
Why do you want developers to pigeonhole you that way? It's not though the guild quests aren't guild-themed; it's just that you have other ways of solving them. Why is that bad? Do you want to be forced to fight with spells only in every mage guild quest? That's not the sort of character system TES has.
Because it would make more sense? The player should only be able to choose "one" guild, and then become master of that guild through an extensive series of compelling, and challenging, quests.
That'd be logical for a game where you're only allowed to be one class, but that's not TES, is it? In TES's character system, you're allowed to be a mage-warrior-thief-archer master-of-all. In such a world, it isn't logical that you're only allowed to join one guild, because characters aren't simple one-class specialists.
I'm sorry but, it makes no sense that one can become the master of the College of Magic with their spells and mana completely untrained, or that can become a Nightingale without a single point in sneaking or lockpicking. Yes, I do advocate some sort of "checks" for this kind of progression, otherwise the guilds just mean shit, and lose their "flavour" (which is exactly what happens in Skyrim: after becoming master of all the guilds in one playthrough, there is absolutely nothing to compel the player to engage with those again on a different one, except maybe if someone plays as a mage, in which case the gear from the College is actually quite nice).
It's not the TES style? Well, from my humble, non-game-dev standpoint (about which nobody but me really gives a fuck), they're doing it wrong.
From what I remember, there are spellcasting segments in the mage guild quest chain where you have to show that you have spellcasting skills, and the same goes for the thief quest chain. There *are* checks for progression. You *do* sneak around and steal in the thief quests, and go around casting spells in the mage quests. It's just that you're allowed to abuse the game system eg by slaughtering the quest NPCs instead. That's sand box for you.
I enjoyed and I enjoy lot Skyrim, A LOT. Even with it flaws. But I think that The Fucker 3 is a more solid Action RPG in terms of "RPGish elements" than Skyrim.
